1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing for managing the execution results of jobs of an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies, schools, corporations, and the like have a demand to manage and limit the use of copying machines and printers. As a management unit, not only a user unit but also a group unit is required. That is, the upper limit of the amount of money and the upper limit of the number of pages are required to be set for each project or organization (to be referred to as a “group” hereinafter) to which the user belongs, and billing control, upper limit control, and result totaling are required to be executed. In order to meet such requirements, a technique that designates a group as a totaling destination for each print process, and executes billing and output control in accordance with the designated group to total the results is known.
However, in the above technique, when a user who belongs to a plurality of groups executes print processes associated with the plurality of groups, only one group can be designated, and designation of a group is left to user's judgment. For example, when a user who belongs to both projects A and B executes print processes associated with both the projects, the user designates either project. Even if the print contents remain the same, a given user may designate project A, and another user may designate project B. That is, the designation of a group depends on user's judgment. As a result, the billing control, upper limit control, and result totaling of print processes associated with a plurality of groups lack precision.